How Dear is Life

A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight #4

by Henry Williamson

The fourth volume of A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight , How Dear is Life follows the story of Phillip Maddison in the portentous months leading to the outbreak of the Great War in 1914.

Now a clerk in the Moon Fire Office in London, Phillip decides to join the territorials, attracted by the money, by the camp near the sea, by the prospect of a new suit of clothes. As the last glorious summer slips away war seems unreal, but the old world is shortly to fall to pieces, never to return, as the British Expeditionary Force sets sail for France.

Genres: British Literature, 20th Century

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1954

About the author

Henry William Williamson was an English soldier, naturalist, farmer and ruralist writer known for his natural history and social history novels, as well as for his fascist sympathies. He won the Hawthornden Prize for literature in 1928 with his book Tarka the Otter.

Henry Williamson is best known for a tetralogy of four novels which consists of The Beautiful Years (1921), Dandelion Days (1922), The Dream of Fair Women (1924) and The Pathway (1928). These novels are collectively known as The Flax of Dream and they follow the life of Willie Maddison from boyhood to adulthood in a rapidly changing world.

Reviews

[Dominic · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Williamson's Chronicle of ancient sunlight 5 of the 15 books cover the First World War, not only from the perspective of the central character as a soldier but also from the perspectives of different people back home.
For me these books are the best of all books written about WW1 as they really get the genuine feel of people from those times

[Paul Christensen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like watching a hideous accident
The events of this volume unfurl:
The looming eclipse of the Occident
And shattering of a World.

[PAUL DEWSON · Rating 5 out of 5]

The fourth book in the series is a compelling read. It finds Phillip Maddison plucked from his life as a clerk in London and transported to the battlefields of Flanders. Williamson captures the mood of the period, the euphoria and jingoism for a war that all believed would be over by Christmas. As usual Williamson displays a keen for landscape, whether describing the seashore in Devon or the bullet swept wastes of no man's land. But above all he speaks of a world that is changing socially, of old certainties that are soon to be swept away along with its innocence.

[N Young · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel is part of a series. In this book, Phillip starts a job as a clerk at the Moon Office in Wine Vaults Lane, trains as a soldier with ‘The London Highlanders’, is sent to France and ends in the trenches. It's a good depiction of life at the time, but quite a lengthy read and challenging given the topic.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Williamson's usual beautiful nature writing and some very good war writing as well